The past week can very well be called earnings season, as many companies announced their results for the Q3. But that’s not all the past 7 days were all about, and if you’re wondering what else deserves your attention, then you’ve come to the right place. Read on to find out everything you might have missed in this week’s SaaS weekly roundup.
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News of the week
Microsoft Teams passes 115 million daily active users
The Redmond giant is on a roll with its enterprise-focused Teams software. In its earnings call, the company announced that the collaboration software has surpassed a milestone of 115million daily active users.
It also announced the earnings for its cloud business – Azure – which increased by 48 percent.
Alphabet announces third quarter 2020 results
Google’s parent company Alphabet announced its third-quarter results, where its revenues increased by 14 percent y-o-y. Google Cloud also witnessed significant growth at $3.4billion, growing 45 percent versus the same period last year.
ServiceNow Q3 beats expectations on strong subscription revenues
ServiceNow’s revenue increased by 30 percent year-on-year at $1.15billion. As far as future guidance is concerned, it’s expected to have revenue between $1.141billion and $1.146billion in Q4.
Shopify’s Q3 shines as businesses go digital, build out e-commerce
The e-commerce software provider Shopify reported revenue of $767.4million, which was up 96 percent from an year ago.
The company was also in the news as it partnered with TikTok to enable social commerce on the popular app. The Shopify merchants will be able to create and optimize ads.
Twilio reports solid Q3 results, revenue up 52%
Communications company Twilio also managed to beat the analyst’s expectations as it announced revenue of $444.8million, which is 52 percent higher than the revenue in Q3 2019.
Vimeo launches free video messaging tool to empower remote teams
Vimeo, which was once hailed as a competitor to YouTube, has been reorienting itself towards businesses. It has now launched Vimeo Record, a free messaging tool for anyone to record their screen from the browser, share video messages, and more.
Freshworks has introduced Freshworks CRM, which is aimed at helping sales and marketing teams find all the tools they might need to reach out to customers at one place. Built upon the Freshworks Neo platform, it brings forth some powerful AI and machine learning capabilities.
Stripe Climate is a new tool to let Stripe customers make carbon removal purchases
Leading payment API provider Stripe has rolled out a feature called Stripe Climate to let customers make contributions to carbon reduction companies while they’re purchasing something. The feature was in beta and was being used by companies like Substack, and can now be enabled by other users of Stripe too.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Eightfold recruiting software startup reaches $1billion value
Meet the newest member of the unicorn club – Eighfold AI – a recruiting software that takes care of all aspects of talent management. The company has raised $125million in a round led by General Catalyst.
Silicon Valley mainstay NEA leads $37.5M investment in Seattle cloud startup Pulumi
Seattle’s Pulumi has received $37.5million financing led by NEA. The startup helps customers apply modern software development practices by provisioning, configuring, and more using cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud among others.
Salto raises $27M to let you configure your SaaS platforms with code
Salto is an open-source company that lets one configure SaaS platforms such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and more. Along with coming out of stealth, it has announced a $27million Series A round that was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Salesforce Ventures.
Customer service chatbots aren’t a new concept, though they may not have reached the levels a lot of us would have wanted them to. Forethought however, believes it can change that notion, with an AI-powered tool called Agatha. It has now announced a $17million Series B funding.
Video creation and editing platform InVideo raises $15 million
InVideo aims to make it dead simple to create and edit videos, and in that mission, the startup has gotten $15million. The Series A round was led by Sequoia Capital India, and the company claims that it has 800k users within a year of its launch.
Announcing Onfleet’s $14million Series A
Quite a few companies are working on the last mile delivery problem using SaaS as a business model. One such company is Onfleet which has nabbed a $14million Series A round led by Kennet Partners.
Lightspeed Venture Partners backs Theta Lake’s video conferencing security tech with $12.7 million
With video calls becoming the norm, their security has become paramount. Enter Theta Lake, a company that provides compliance and security tools to software like Cisco Webex, Microsoft Teams, RingCentral, and Zoom, among others. It has closed a $12.7million funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Must reads
The no-code generation is arriving
Build a winning GTM strategy in 4 steps
Product-led companies: why and how they work
Listen to
Zomentum: SaaS customer development and no-code prototypes – with Shruti Ghatge
Zomentum is a sales product built for MSPs (managed service providers). The company has an unusual story, with its co-founder and CEO Shruti Ghatge working at Accel before starting the company. They also spent time in customer research before even starting with the development. Listen to the journey, how Zomentum found its customers and more in this podcast.
Trends and Opportunities for Building a SaaS in 2020 with Rob Walling of TinySeed
TinySeed’s Rob Wailing shares his views on how the SaaS market has shaped up, what kind of companies are being started and how they’re reaching out to customers. He also discusses on how info products and SaaS offerings differ for indie hackers.
Watch
8base CEO Albert Santalo: a next generation backend service for powering SaaS
8base is a company that helps businesses build professional-grade applications by using the combination of no-code platform and even avail its services to get the back-end platform built. In this video, its CEO Albert Santalo talks about the company’s evolution, its revenue, and more.
